Can national cirriculm ruin health

Can the National Curriculum damage your health?
The concept of health amongst 10 year old children
C. Jonker, D. Kassem and B. Banton
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference
(September 11-14 1997: University of York)
ABSTRACT
An exploratory, mainly qualitative, research project amongst 10 year old children shows that children have a limited view of health. In their view, being healthy means to eat healthy (i.e. not nice) food, to have lots of fresh air and to do sports. Children at this age have a more limited concept than the adult's view of health which is predominantly biomechanical and in which health simply means absence of disease. A survey of OFSTED-reports shows that most schools do not have a policy on health education. The paper recommends that the National Curriculum should be modified to allow health education to be wider than the biomechanical model and that health education should have its own entry in the National Curric...